Red Cab

Just missed my train to NYC because of Red Cab. Was told the cab would arrive in 20 minutes, and it never came. When I called the dispatcher, I was told that the job had been completed… even though a cab NEVER SHOWED UP.

Not sure why they have such bad reviews. Called in a panic to get to the airport. Guy was there in 3 minutes and was super friendly.

Woman dispatcher in AM was super rude. Truly obnoxious & combative. FYI lady, this ain’t NYC and you ain’t Danny Devito…
Can Brookline taxis really afford to lose yet more business to Über & other Boston cab companies? Hey, no problem Red Cab, plenty of other options out there…

Took a cab today for what should have been a short ride. First the driver claimed confusion about the neighborhood and proceeded to take a rather circuitous route through my neighborhood, actually backtracking most of the way. Then he tried to take another turn that would have detoured us through heavy traffic, lights, and extra distance. He started arguing with me loudly when I told him to stay on the direct path. I got on the phone with dispatch so they could get wind of what was happening. He continued to scream «LIes» while I was trying to talk to the dispatcher. Dispatch hung up on me probably because of him. Finally I got near enough to my destination and told the driver to stop immediately. He continued to scream at and insult me and did not pull the car over until the fare had risen yet again. Is this seriously how this cab company treats disabled people? Apparently this driver thinks it’s «deranged» to expect honest service. Find another way. Find another cab company. This is not the first time I have had issues with this company, however it has never been quite this scary.

Short and to the point… they forgot about us.
Once the 2^nd cab finally arrived, after a minute we wish it didn’t. The cab was in terrible condition, the door had to be pried open, not to mention it smelled like urine once inside. The driver would hit the brakes randomly along the way without reason, had no clue how to get from Brookline to the Boston Common and wanted to take Storrow Drive in the middle of rush hour which was a parking lot. We had to argue with him to take another rout. Absolutely terrible service.
Short and to the point… I’m forgetting about them.

Terrible service, terrible driver. Had to catch an early morning train so I called Red Cab the night before to reserve and the morning of to confirm. Requested a cab that took credit cards because I didn’t have cash. The dispatcher stated would not be a problem b/​c all the cabs take cards. I get picked up then dropped off at the train station, hand the guy the card only to be told he doesn’t take cards. I told him that I specifically request a cab that took cards. I asked him to bring me to an ATM to which he responded «I can’t help you». So didn’t take my card and wouldn’t bring me to an ATM? Call Red Cab in the taxi and was told «I’m not sure what I can do for you?
What am I in the twilight zone?
Then the guy begins to lecture me because of my frustration. My advice — call another cab company. Any other cab company. –Dan O.

One star is for showing up at all! I have always used Red Cab and they have always been late! Shame on me for continuing the bad habit
But shame on me no more!
A useless dispatcher, a way too late cab, an arrogant driver who carries no change and doesn’t even say thanks for an overly large tip (thinking maybe it wasnt his fault) all add up to bye, bye Red Cab!

Want a cab that actually shows up? Not in the mood to be emotionally abused when you call back to inquire as to the whereabouts of the cab you called two hours ago? Don’t call Red Cab.
Saturday night. I had finished shopping to find myself in a freak thunderstorm, stranded in the rain with a cart full of groceries. I took the bus there and didn’t live far. I had approximately $ 6 to my name, so my first call to Red Cab was to ask how much it would cost to go a little less than a mile.
«Are you serious?!»
Um, yeah… I don’t take cabs often and I only have a few dollars.
[Hangs up on me]
I looked up some other cab companies but they didn’t service my neighborhood (Roslindale). Reluctantly, I called Red Cab back. They asked for my address and said it would be about an hour. I don’t know if that’s a reasonable wait or not, but thankfully I had an iPod to keep me company as I whittled away the minutes sitting on a dry patch of concrete, watching the store close and the parking lot empty, car by car.
1:15 elapses. I call back and POLITELY ask where my cab is. «It’s a Saturday night, lady! And our cabs are dispatched from downtown.» Oh. You failed to mention that before. The dispatcher sent out another cab and said it wouldn’t be longer than 15 minutes.
30 more minutes elapse, taking me to 1:45 total wait. This time, I call back and am understandably pissed. My words were civil but my tone was certainly less-​than-​pleased. WHERE. IS. THIS. FUCKING. CAB!
Turns out they got my address wrong (80 instead of 800, obviously a typo on their part, not my misspeaking it) and that the cab had come and gone. They had my phone number; if they couldn’t find me, why didn’t they call? So, what, 1:45 plus an additional hour now that you have the right address?!
«You ain’t gon’ get no cab with an attitude like that, bitch!»
And again I heard the familiar sound of them slamming the phone down in my face.
I finally gave up and pushed my cart a mile home in the pouring rain — something I could have done two hours prior. I was thankful that the store was ghetto enough to not have those auto-​lock devices on the wheels of their shopping carts. I’m not sure what I would have done otherwise.
Sidenote: Further investigation revealed that the address they originally had for me doesn’t even exist, so on top of it all, they straight up lied about having sent someone out to that location.
I think the dusty mirror in the office (as described in Ty’s review below) explains it all. I’ve never experienced service as appalling as this, at any type of business, ever.

If I could give them 0 stars, I would. I’ve tried to take this cab several times but was told that they do not accept credit cards. I used this cab service tonight from Reservoir station and discovered that they have taken cards for quite some time now. I was rudely and accusingly informed of this by my cab driver who was rude from the second I got into the cab until the second I payed. When I told him that I don’t usually take this card due to the no card issue he accused me of lying. He didn’t listen to my directions, missed turns and was an atrocious driver. While trying to pay with my card he yelled at me for swiping too early and tried to grab my credit card out of my hand. Will never, NEVER use this service again. Go with Bay State Taxi. My cab rides with them are always cheaper and the drivers have some sense of good manners.

If you think it’s ok for a cab to let you open the door, start to get in and while you’re answering his question of where you’re going he decides that Cambridge is the wrong place just hits the gas and speeds off, then use this cab company. If you think that’s not how you run a business, then I’d rather walk. (I called too, dispatcher was apparently used to this kind of thing and was giving me the runaround. I realize the rules between Cambridge and Boston are crap, but I was just going over the river and it was 2:30am. I paid double to jump into a cab who picked me up illegally. Imagine that, I’m a big tipper.
These guys are class A jerks.

If you value your life, or the life of those around you, I would highly recommend that you never use Red Cab. In my experience, the drivers are rude, disrespectful and unsafe. Even as a pedestrian or in my own car, I fear Red Cabs because I have found that even more than other taxi companies, Red Cabs are more likely to cut me off, change lanes without using a turn signal, and driver erratically in general. I am not kidding when I say that I would never advise anyone to take a Red Cab. If it was pouring rain and I was running late for an important meeting and the only taxi in sight was a Red Cab, I’d rather walk.

Good points: The driver, David, was really friendly, and although he was 20 minutes late, when we got stuck behind a firetruck and were on a one way street, he reset the meter so I didn’t have to pay the extra $ 2.
Bad points: The dispatcher scolded me for missing his phone call, which was not appreciated, as I had been waiting out in front of my apartment for the past 20 minutes, and missed his call due to street noise.
In summation: David, yay! Dispatcher, boo!

So here’s the thing with cabs in Boston. They suck. Never on time, price to high, rude drivers. The reason I enjoy Red Cab is that they are more consistently pleasant than not.
I take Red Cab at least a few times a week. In fact, they are the only company I will call. They are on time 90% of the time, and if they are late, it is at most 10 minutes.
Of course I have had a few less than pleasant rides, but they are always better than any other cab company I have used. One huge plus is that their drivers are friendly.
Sometimes they may not have credit card machines, but as long as you have a debit card the drivers have always been happy to stop at an ATM.
I give red cab a B overall, which is quite good compared to the D average of the cab companies in Boston.

So my girlfriend and I were en route to partake in luxury seals at a 7pm Bruins game. We called for a cab from Red Cab from Hyslop street in Brookline nearly fifty minutes prior to game time. The cab never came.
The next night, we were set to go to our two year anniversary dinner. We called red cab AN HOUR IN ADVANCE, ON A
never showed.
Initially, I figured the cab was late, so we called the dispatcher. he said ten to twelve minutes. Fine. Fifteen minutes later, no cab. I call back again. He says ten to twelve minutes; now, after initially being polite, I was understandably perturbed at this point. I told him, «Buddy, don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. When’s the guy getting here?‘
At this point, he launches into a screaming, profanity laden triade, „Don’t talk to me like like I’m your f***ing dog you two-​bit punk…“ To which I exclaimed, A: If you saw me, (I made a living for many years as an MMA fighter/​armed security/​nightclub bouncer) I would wear you like a sock puppet, you loud-​mouthed telephone tough guy. Second of all, you can eat a bowl of cock and choke on the last three, you lazy, lying, back-​of-​the-​short-​bus, high school drop-​out-​pathetic excuse for a dispatcher. You’re an obnoxious, rude snippy little c*nt; kill yourself and stop wasting my damned oxygen. Find a hedge and go play hide and go f*** yourself, you festering little anal wart.» and hung up.
Fifteen minutes prior to pur reservations, no cab ever showed, so I drove my own car there so fast I would’ve qualified for any F1 race I chose. Thank god for supercharged Mini coopers.
That said, throughout the evening, while eating, the dispatcher kept calling back my cell, nine times over the course of four hours, to scream, berate, and curse at me, even calling my girlfriend’s mother’s house whereupon we departed, and doing the same to her. At one point, when I was completely fed up, I answered my phone & told him I’d call him back right after his mother finished fellating me, at which point he got so loud that parties at tables twenty feet away turned to see who was screaming out my phone so loudly. At that point, I’d had it, so after we finished desert, I drove to their dispatch not to far away to see how tough wanna-​be Mr. T really was, with the hopes that I’d be so privileged as to be able to actually kick a field goal with his skull. .
When I came in the door and confronted him, he ran like Usain Bolt out the back door, never to be seen again. The radio cackled with innumerable cabbies wondering where there next call was. And I couldn’t help but notice the pornographic computer screen saver, a vat of petroleum jelly ON THE DESK, razor blade, «dusty» mirror, straw, and a smoldering marijuana roach in the man’s office. It was bar none, the classiest office I have ever seen (if you worked peddling infant porn when you weren’t to busy running your gonzo beasto-​necrophelia clown porn empire.)
That said, for future reference given the creepy deliverance-​baby lovechild of Steve Buschemi & Ralphie May running the show there, I’d feel better getting A ride from a balding stranger with a mustache drving a brown, 1970’s blacked out panel van with a dildo for a hood ornament & bondage apparatuses welded to the frame in Kabul, rather than deal with these mouthy numb skulls again. They’re tactless, undependable, and rude beyond words. And if the dispatchers are that messed up on duty, one must wonder what qualifies their drivers as «sober» and/​or safe. I wouldn’t roll the dice on my life with that crew of misfit chimps.
DO NOT EVER USE RED CAB EVER. They are without question, the worst, most unprofessional, unpunctual, rude, offensive, and disgusting cab company I have ever seen in all my worldly travels, not just in Boston. Take a stand, and spend your money elsewhere. You, and every patron, deserve far better service than they’ll ever be capable of providing given the pandemic plethora of ineptitude permeating across the board at that company.
Zero stars. Epic fail. I’m pissed as hell I MUST give them at least a star on Unilocal to post this, as they deserve a negative several hundred star rating.
And, I’ll even sign my name to this (Ty Hawkins) just to show I’m not blowing smoke up anyone’s ass. I have several witnesses and a phone record and voice mails to back it up. I can be emailed at «
» for interview requests, and given the level of pyroclastic festering rage that I still feel over being so mistreated on two consecutive nights by these douche nozzles, I am willing to proliferate my story, and sign to it, to any and all news media or bloggers wishing to quote me. F*CK RED CAB.

Horrible, unreliable, unprofessional, unfriendly, untrustworthy… need I say more?
I called for a cab several hours in advance of needing it b/​c I knew it would be a busy cab night. I called to see where it was, they said it was on the way. Still no cab. Called again (now that it was 45 minutes late), they gave me attitude and said they would call when it was on its way (so they clearly lied before), and they NEVER called, NEVER showed. I ended up walking out onto the street and hailing my own cab. I will never call red cab again. HORRIBLE.

While not necessarily the fastest, at least they are reliable. I tend to call 50 minutes before the train I need to take at Ruggles, I live in Brookline, so its a 10 – 15 minute ride. Always on a Sunday afternoon. I usually make it to Ruggles with 20 minutes to spare.
The taxis tend to arrive in 10 – 20 minutes on average. The drivers are be friendly and courteous and good drivers. The cabs are clean and in good repair.
One complain is that they tend not to have credit card machines, so I make sure that I always have cash on me. I highly recommend them if you live in Brookline and need to call a cab, but allow a little extra time just in case.

NEVER call a cab from this place. EVER.

This company has been more reliable for me than other cabs in/​near Boston, but it’s still a cab company which means there’s bound to be some shadiness. It basically depends what driver you get. I will say though that from my experiences, their drivers have been friendly and didn’t try to take the long way… at least as of today. ;)
My only real complaint is that sometimes I’ve called and gotten a cab right away while other times I’ve waited an hour. Every time I’d call to ask about it «Oh it’s on the way». Yeah, finally I got smart and just took another cab.

Two stars even though I generally take Red Cab all the time. The trick is you need to be desperate, you need to be in Brookline, and you need to NOT call ahead. Here’s why.
1. Desperation: You’re putting your life on the line here. They speed, they pass on the left, they slam on the breaks, they define Massachusetts driving. The plus side is that you certainly won’t be late.
2. We found a Red Cab somewhere on the Boston Line and got in — funny story, Brookline cabs can’t pick up in Boston. Oops! The cops pulled us over and the cab driver told us to lie. We lied for a minute before the cop was onto us and told us to get out or get arrested. Great.
3. If you call, you’ll generally hear the answer of «WHAT?» and when you tell the cab the time you want, you should probably just say «now» and wait anywhere from 15 min — 2 hours, depending on the night. Cool. If you’re around Brookline — head to Wash Square or Cleveland Circle or Reservoir — where they’re usually stationed/​parked.
Oh and they’re run by the same company as Bay State — so don’t be surprised if you call the number for Bay State and get the same dispatcher. Yikes.

I live in Jamaica Plain now. And not the nice part with all the friendly lesbians, either — the scary part with Hispanic people, who are bilingual. That’s why white people don’t like Hispanic people, right? Because they’re intimidated by their dual language mastery?
Anyway, cabs are scared to come to my part of JP, which has been a significant problem for people who get drunk at my house. (Hey you!) When we first moved there, we had a few really unpleasant nights with people who couldn’t leave our place because cabs flat out refused to come. That sucked because then they drank all our booze and scared our cats. Oh wait, that was me. Whatever, it still sucked.
Here is the cab place that is at least sortof willing to come to JP: Red Cab. They still come slow sometimes, so it’s not ideal, but I can’t complain too much about it since it’s the best I’ve got.
We’re still looking around and I’ll update this review if I find an even more reliable cab company for JP, but for now Red Cab is the company on my phone. Thanks, guys: I don’t even know one language, and you’re still willing to get my retarded friends out of my house. I owe you a beer. And maybe a cat.